About Sir Patrick Stewart OBE

Patrick Stewart played the dashing chrome-domed Captain Jean-Luc Picard on Star Trek: The Next Generation and in several movies, and the chrome-wheelchair-bound Professor Charles Xavier in the X-Men films. With his bald head and booming, mellifluous voice, Stewart commands attention, whether on stage or screen or in person.

He wanted to be an actor since he was a boy, and began appearing in local stage productions at the age of 12. Still in his teens, he worked as a furniture sales man to earn tuition to the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, where he studied for two years. He began going bald at the age of 19, at about the time he made his professional stage debut. With numerous roles and good reviews, Stewart became a respected stage actor, and he first appeared in the cinema in 1975, with a supporting role in a film of Henrik Ibsen's Hedda starring Glenda Jackson. Prior to wearing the Star Fleet uniform, he was perhaps best known for playing the sadistic Roman soldier Sejanus on the ancient soap opera I, Claudius with Derek Jacobi.

When he took the Star Trek role, Stewart says he knew that his life of general anonymity was about to be changed forever. He considered taking the more-traveled Hollywood path of hiring chauffeurs and security, but thought it might eventually impede his ability to play ordinary characters. Instead he resolutely does his own shopping, driving, and other errands, keeping his familiar face tilted downward but interacting with strangers everywhere he goes. Still, Stewart is often described as taking himself a tad too seriously. On the Star Trek set, he once stalked away from scheduled interviews with Good Morning America when he thought the chat show was treating Star Trek in an undignified manner. On Broadway, he once stepped out of character to berate audience members for talking too loudly, and on another occasion he interrupted the post-performance applause to criticize the play's producers for insufficiently advertising the production.

On stage, Stewart has repeatedly played all the characters in a solo rendition of A Christmas Carol, and he has earned his Shakespearean actor fame by performing in virtually all of the Bard's plays. He has also starred in a race-reversed production of Othello at Washington DC's Shakespeare Theatre, playing the usually-black title role amidst a cast of African-American actors in the traditionally white roles.

After dim box office returns for Star Trek: Nemesis in 2002, Stewart has reluctantly conceded that he has almost certainly played Captain Picard for the last time.

He has been a member and financial supporter of the human rights group Amnesty International, since at least two decades before he found fame. He has also been a member of the British Labour Party for many years.

In 2003, Stewart became Chancellor of the University of Huddersfield near his hometown in West Yorkshire, announcing that despite his obligations as an actor he had no intention of being an "absentee Chancellor".

The actor Stewart is not believed to be related to his historical namesake, the tyrannical Earl of Orkney who was beheaded for treason in 1615.